‘Board decision was unanimous’: DBS appoints Tan Su Shan as deputy CEO, to succeed CEO Piyush Gupta in March 2025
DBS announced Wednesday (Aug 7) that the board has appointed Tan Su Shan as deputy CEO, in addition to her present role as group head of institutional banking.
She will succeed Piyush Gupta as CEO when he retires at the next annual general meeting on Mar 28, 2025.
Tan will be DBS’ first female chief executive, and the first home-grown staff member hired from internally to take the helm at the bank.
Tan, 56, has more than 35 years of experience in consumer banking, wealth management and institutional banking.
Besides Singapore, she has worked in major financial centres such as Hong Kong, Tokyo and London.
DBS chairman Peter Seah said at a media briefing on Wednesday: “In 2021, Piyush said he wanted to retire when he turns 65. The board then decided that we really had to move the pace up and go through a selection process of who we should appoint to lead the team.”
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Tan “stood out” among the many top names considered for the role, he added. “The board decision to appoint Su Shan was unanimous.”
Gupta, 64, said: “Even though I’ve been the face of DBS, in many ways, banking is a team sport.
“We will play tag team for the next few months, so that she gets every opportunity to try out and get comfortable with all the moving parts to run a bank.”
On succeeding Gupta, who has helmed DBS for nearly 15 years, Tan noted that she had “big shoes to fill”.
“But, guess what? Our shoes are different; we wear different kinds of shoes. Our styles may be different, but some things may not change going forward,” she said.
Tan noted four points that she will focus on: culture, customers, collaboration, continuity.
While macroeconomic conditions and technology will change, she expects that the bank’s priorities – to be agile, to adapt and to transform – will not change. She did not name specific targets, but said she will announce them when ready.
Who is Tan?
She began her career in 1989 at ING Baring Securities, where she worked on institutional equity and derivative sales.
She was at Morgan Stanley from 1997 to 2010, where she became head of private wealth management for South-east Asia.
Her Morgan Stanley tenure was broken by a stint at Citibank from 2005 to 2008, when she was regional head for Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei at Citi Private Bank.
Tan took on the role of group head of wealth management when she joined DBS in 2010, and became group head for consumer banking and wealth management in 2013.
Under her management, DBS grew to become one of the top names in regional private banking. To build scale, the lender also acquired Societe Generale and ANZ’s wealth businesses in the region in 2014 and 2016, respectively.
In 2019, she became group head of institutional banking.
In this role, Tan has tried to bring different segments, markets and industries together, and created digital journeys end-to-end, she said in an interview with The Business Times.
This included supporting companies with digital solutions, such as its application programming interfaces (APIs).
Tan also trained her relationship managers to be industry specialists, rather than generalists, so they can better work with companies in those sectors.
At the briefing, Seah noted that Tan performed well in looking after the “two big parts of the bank that contribute the lion’s share of the bank’s income”.
Because of the functions she has performed, she has also been “very much involved in our technology journey”, he added.
Tan is also well-known outside DBS, having served as a nominated member of parliament between 2012 and 2014.
She has also served on several boards in government, education and women’s leadership.
Referring to the transition time of around eight months, Gupta said there are areas in which Tan will understudy him, such as in investor relations or in regulatory matters.
She will also be involved in areas “which have bearing on the future”, such as business plans for next year, capital management strategies and strategic direction, he added.
Tan said: “The biggest and best thing we can do to celebrate Piyush’s legacy is to continue the path that he has led us on, which is one of transformation, innovation and growth.”
“So I’m hopeful that, with the continuity and the leadership of the team, myself, Peter and the board, we will continue his legacy,” she added.
Earlier this week, BT suggested that Gupta could step down soon, and that his successor would likely need to be skilled enough to maintain DBS’ lead in the age of digital and online challenges.
The announcement of the bank’s pick for its deputy CEO role was made ahead of a rare after-market briefing for the lender’s second-quarter results, which key members of the lender’s management team also attended.
DBS’ Q2 net profit rose 6 per cent on year to S$2.79 billion, amid a broad-based growth in total income. The earnings beat the S$2.7 billion consensus forecast in a Bloomberg survey of four analysts.
Return on equity stood at 18.2 per cent for the quarter.
The lender declared a dividend of 54 Singapore cents per share for the period, up from 44 cents in the year-ago period.
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